Black Buddha Pt. 1
Summary Schanke and Captain Cohen are taking an extradited prisoner to Alberta for trial when their plane is blown up by a bomber. The new commander of the 96th Precinct, Capt. Joe Reese assigns Nick to work with the freshly promoted Det. Tracy Vetter, daughter of one of the police commissioners. As Nick contemplates quitting his job and moving on, more bombs are planted that threaten his police colleagues. Guest Cast *Tamara Gorski......Claire Gibson *Stuart Hughes......"Vudu" *Damon D'Oliveira......The Inca *Karen Waddell......Officer Miller * Ola Sturik......newscaster * Gillian Vanderburgh......Karen Detailed Story Recap Prologue In a back room somewhere in Toronto, a mystery man is assembling a bomb while listening to music. Scenes of the bomber at work are intercut with scenes of him making love to a woman in a hotel bedroom. As he completes the bomb mechanism in one scene, they climax in the other. Then, he fits over the bomb a music box topped with the figure of a ballet dancer. He puts this into tissue paper in a fancy box decorated with a bow. Meanwhile, the copilot is getting dressed in the hotel room. We realize that the alternating scenes were a flashback when the bomber offers her the fancy box. When she takes it, he insists flirtatiously that she not open her present until she is airborne. Act One Flashback to 1912. Chaos. A young girl cries for her mother, and people hurry about. The child's doll tumbles to the deck. Meanwhile, Nicholas de Brabant and Claire Gibson are standing in front of a gangway, talking. Both are elegantly dressed. Claire speaks with a French accent: she is deeply distressed by the situation, claiming guilt for the plight of the ship. Nick insists earnestly that she has no way of knowing this, but she is adamant. She is the cause, and she deserves to die, she says. As she holds up a small statuette of the Buddha made of black stone and set with jewels, she asserts, "I am the Buddha." In the background, someone in a wheelchair is pushed across the deck. A door opens; people run, calling out for directions. Unnoticed by anyone in their panic, Nick bares his fangs, pulls Claire's head to one side, and bites down. Nick wakes from his dream, and sits up in bed with a jerk, startled to realize that his nightmare of the Titanic has been no more than a memory. He feels his forehead, slick with bloody sweat, and then gets out of bed. Downstairs, he picks a half-full bottle of blood out of the refrigerator, uncorks it, and drinks deeply. After he has turned on the television, he listens to the newscaster as she announces the extradition of an accused prisoner, Dollard, to Alberta along with the crucial evidence against him in a courthouse bombing that had occurred in Edmonton. Before the news story is finished, the phone rings; and Nick turns off the TV. It's Schanke, Nick's partner; and their conversation makes it clear that he has been assigned to accompany Dollard on the flight to Alberta. In Dr. Lambert's office, she and Nick are talking about her attempts to find a cure for his vampirism. Nick is feeling pessimistic; she is trying to encourage him. She points out that the four years she has been trying are no more than an eyeblink to him, and that there has already been improvement, in as much as he can—just barely—keep raw hamburger down, which initially was impossible. As they switch to a light teasing tone, the phone interrupts them. It's Lt. Joe Reese from the Castle Frank precinct, who is temporarily taking over the 96th Precinct while Capt. Cohen is out of town with Schanke, taking the prisoner to Alberta. At the station, Reese tries to cajole Nick into looking favourably on a temporary assignment to work with a rookie detective for the week. From one perspective, it's a delicate matter: his temporary partner is the daughter of a man who is on the Police Commission. If Reese is ever to get promoted permanently to a command position, he will need the support of someone like that: he hopes to curry favour by starting the new Det. Tracy Vetter off in her promotion by assigning her to work with "a bona fide hero"—but Nick must do everything in his power to see that nothing happens to her. Initial impressions are less than great: Tracy is half asleep from her sudden switch to the night shift. Still, Nick takes her for a drive in his car so the two can have a chance to talk. He finds Tracy deeply defensive about her relationship with a Police Commissioner, and determined to prove that her promotion has been earned on merit. Meanwhile, the bomber has pulled his car up to the side of the road near the airport. The flight to Edmonton is just taking off. In the cockpit, the copilot is talking to the control tower. Behind her, she has placed the present she has been given. Scenes of her are intercut with Nick and Tracy in the Caddy: these events are simultaneous. Nick and Tracy are still talking; but the plane is taking off. Unconsciously drawn by the knowledge that Schanke and Cohen are there, Nick is driving along the highway to the airport. When his car passes the bomber's, which is parked on the verge, he has no idea of the significance. He and Tracy are simply talking about the case, and the capture of Dollard. Meanwhile, the plane being airborne, the bomber uses an elecronic remote to start the music box. Behind the copilot, her present starts to tinkle—to her surprise, until she realizes that the sound is coming from inside the wrapped box. But, when she is holding the dancer music box in her hand, Vudu presses the remote again, and blows up the plane. Down on the ground, Nick and Tracy witness the explosion in the air. The plane goes down in a fireball. Tracy calls in the incident; and Nick pulls up his car above the crash site. There is burning debris scattered over a wide area: clearly no one could have survived. At least, that is how it appears until Nick—with his keen vampire hearing—realizes that a baby is crying. He bolts downhill to the crash site and starts to search. Eventually, he locates the child and hands it to Tracy. Then something else catches his eye. He kneels to pick it up: it is Schanke's ID. Horrified, Nick realizes that the plane must have been the one that his partner and Cohen had been on, and they are both dead. Act Two People are walking around the crash site, including Lt. Reese and Tracy, who are talking about Nick's rescue of the baby, and Nick and Dr. Lambert, who are discussing Schanke's death. Reese overhears them, and assures Nick that he has sent someone over to their house to tell Myra about her husband's death. Nick insists that he has to go and talk to her himself, though he is unsure what to say. At this point, as Reese says, there is no certainty that the explosion had anything to do with Dollard. Nick leaves; but Dr. Lambert has work to do at the crash site. Reese offers Tracy a lift in his car; and the two of them head off through the debris. For Nick, the airplane crash has brought on memories: Flashback, 1912. The camera shifts along the side of the Titanic, past portholes, up to the deck. Nicholas de Brabant is standing at the rail, looking out over the sea, as Claire approaches him. She taunts him pertly with his irresponsibility in travelling so indiscreetly with mortals, and reveals that she knows what he is. She has, she admits, a fascination with danger—and the occult—and offers him a few drops of her blood as introduction, drawing it from her wrist, which she scratches with one of her long finger nails. Once she has him sufficiently fascinated, she asks for his help. Meanwhile, in the present, Nick walks up the slope to his car. There are a number of people looking down at the site; and Nick drives off without realizing that the bomber is among them. Where the others are staring in horrified interest, he is smugly drinking coffee from a mug. As Nick drives along, he returns to memory: Flashback, 1912. In a large stateroom on the Titanic, he is sitting opposite Claire Gibson, who opens a small strong box to remove the Buddha statuette. She recounts its story: it had been removed from a temple, and its subsequent owners all lay under a curse of vengeance; but its value lay not in its jewels, but in its power to grant its owner's deepest wish. Napoleon had owned it, as had Louis-Philippe. Its immediately previous owner had been an opium lord with a crippled daughter—who now walks perfectly. Claire had paid two million dollars for the Black Buddha: she wished for immortal youth; and, if Nick would grant her wish by bringing her across, she would pay him with the statuette. As for the curse, that was why she had decided to travel on the safest ship afloat. But there is a sudden crash, as the Titanic hits an iceberg. In the present, Tracy and Lt. Reese are themselves heading for the road to drive away from the crash site. The debris-filled ground is treacherous; and, as they stumble along, Tracy is suddenly certain that she has spotted one of the corpses open its eyes. Reese hurries over to check, but assures her the man is stone dead. Seeing how shaken she is, he insists that they leave. However, unseen behind them as they go, the mystery man gets up, runs off, and then flies away. Meanwhile, Nick has pulled his car up outside the Schankes' house. On the porch, he is talking to Myra. Over this is a voiceover of tonight's Nightcrawler monologue. LaCroix is in his broadcast booth, talking into a microphone about the pain of loss: who suffers most, he asks, the one who dies or the ones left behind? No one knows this better than those who see so many die. Yet is it grief or guilt that weighs so heavily? Back in the loft, backed into a corner with sun streaming into the room, Nick has the Black Buddha statuette in his hand. The Nightcrawler voiceover continues as Nick lowers the shutters and raises an open bottle of blood. Act Three In his back room, the bomber is at work again. Nick and Reese come into the squad room of the 96th Precinct police station, deep in discussion. The crash site is closed to the police, the case having been taken over by the RCMP. Their ignorance frustrates both of them, the more so since it is the Metro Police who are being blamed by the media for transporting Dollard on a regular flight. In Cohen's office (now Reese's), the temporary precinct commander tells Nick that he should take the week off, pointing out that even Tracy had been given a couple of days leave, and had had the sense to stay home. Or so he believes. Instead, though, Tracy has actually gone out to the airport, where one of the hangars is being used as a temporary morgue. As she walks along the hall inside, a news broadcast is on the P.A., saying that no one has come forward to identify the baby girl who had survived the crash. Tracy just keeps walking, until she is stopped by a desk set across the hall as a partial barrier. It is manned by a uniformed RCMP officer, who tells her that it is a closed area. However, Tracy flashes ID at him, and he lets her pass. A moment later, Nick comes up and flashes his own ID, only to be stopped: the area is closed to Metro Police. When he asks how Tracy had got in, the Mountie says that she's with the Police Commission. Nick immediately uses hypnosis to persuade the man that he, too, is with the Commission, and is let pass. Inside the temporary morgue, Nick teases Tracy about her willingness to use her father's influence to get inside. Defensively, Tracy insists that she just wants to know what is happening with the baby. He is offhand about how he manages to get in. Dr. Lambert is not pleased to see either of them. She is dressed in coveralls and a mask, since she has been dealing with the corpses from the crash site. They go into the main area of the morgue. On one side wall are rows of pictures, with identification beneath each. On the other side wall, though, are only three sheets of paper, two with pictures. Those, Dr. Lambert explains, belong to the people whose bodies have not yet been found. Two women were seated over the wing, and probably incinerated; and there is a man, J.D. Valdez, about whom little is known. The Mountie comes in, and Dr. Lambert tells him that they are the last ones out. After looking at the pictures of Schanke and Cohen, Nick is ready to leave with her. However, as they are all heading for the door, Tracy thinks she spots a movement in the shadows. She is sufficiently uncertain to suggest that Nick and Natalie go on ahead without her, telling them that she thinks she has dropped her keys. She goes back inside; and they linger in the hall to talk. Natalie is exhausted and depressed by the work she has been doing. The explosion had indeed been caused by a bomb. Tracy tells the Mountie also that she had left something inside; but, once he has left, she draws her gun. She moves deeper into the morgue, cautious and alert. Suddenly, a rustling sound draws her attention to a man, kneeling down behind the taped off area where the bodies are. He is rummaging through the body bags, looking for something. Tracy orders him to freeze and raise his hands; but, when he rises and turns, clearly amused by her interference, he says that it is impossible for him to do as she orders. He cannot raise his hands because he lost one in the crash. Tracy is stunned to recognize the corpse that she had seen move at the crash site. At the sight of the raw-edged stump as he raises his arm, she drops to the floor in a dead faint. Act Four Sitting in Nick's apartment, Natalie looks at the Black Buddha in her hand. She admits to having heard of it in a television special on the Titanic, but points out that everyone believes it to be in the ship's safe. This prompts Nick into another flashback. Flashback to 1912. On the deck of the Titanic, a man embraces his wife and son. In Claire Gibson's stateroom, she looks at the Black Buddha in her hand. Nick comes in, rather out of breath, to tell her that they are putting the women and children off in the lifeboats. There aren't enough boats for the men. To Claire, this clearly indicates the curse at work: the ship is unsinkable, but it is going to sink: it could be no accident. Natalie is as disbelieving in the present as Nick had been back then. Like Claire, he blames himself. It is his wish on the Buddha that has brought the curse; and, just as back then, so many died on the Titanic, so now Schanke and the others have died on the plane. Natalie assures him that the Black Buddha is just a "pretty black rock with a lot of big jewels stuck to it"; but Nick is unconvinced. He believes in the Buddha's magic: that, after all, is why he still keeps the statue. Finally, he admits to Natalie that he thinks that she, and the cure that she offers, is the wish granted him by the statue. Natalie is outraged. Flashback to 1912. Nick offers to bring Claire across, but she refuses. She says that it would be unbearable to live forever with the guilt of so many deaths on her conscience. On a street in Toronto, heading south, the mystery vampire from the morgue is driving Tracy's car. When she wakes up in the passenger seat, he introduces himself as Javier Vachon. He is scornful about the car, but in great good humour: he plans to hypnotize her into taking him to the Salvation Army for clothes, then back to her place to clean up, and finally into forgetting all about everything connected with him. To his annoyance, it turns out that she is a Resistor. So he falls back on swapping his story of the crash for the help he wants. In the broadcast booth, LaCroix is in the middle of another Nightcrawler monologue, to which Nick is listening as he heads for the Raven. When he gets there, though, he finds that Janette is not around, and the bartender seems not to know who she is. Then LaCroix comes over, and explains that Janette has moved on, selling him the club. He has made changes: there is now a strip on Friday night. He broadcasts from a booth at the back (rather than the studio at CERK). When Nick asks why Janette left, LaCroix is cagy, simply saying that it was her time, for she had been in Toronto for twenty years. He warns Nick not to go looking for her, but trust that their paths will cross again sometime. Then he suggests that Nick, too, might consider it time to move on, what with his recent losses. In her apartment, Tracy waits in the bedroom while Vachon takes a shower and changes into new clothes. When he comes out, she reminds him that she has seen him at the crash site. She says that she suspects that he must be the missing male passenger, J.D. Valdez, and that he's running from something. Vachon admits as much, but insists she can't help. He tries once again to hypnotize her. He almost succeeds—and is almost enticed into biting her—but she is conscious enough to tell him to stop. He pulls back, and hurriedly leaves her apartment. Meanwhile, the bomber is once again hard at work in his back room. The top of his workbench is covered with wrapped boxes of chocolates with bows on top. At the police station, Nick is getting a tape operator to run repeatedly through the recording of the final words said by the crew of the doomed airplane. Reese comes in, feeling that Nick is morbidly wasting the other man's time. Nick quickly congratulates him: Reese has been promoted to captain, and given command of the 96th Precinct. Then he explains that they've found music in the background of the tape. Nevertheless, Reese insists that he stop: the investigation is out of their jurisdiction. Reluctantly, Nick agrees, and goes back to clearing out Schanke's desk. He is quite distressed when he comes across the plaque for the "Partners of the Month" award that he and Schanke had won the previous year. Nick goes into Reese's office. The new Captain is on the phone, obsequiously accepting congratulations from Commissioner Vetter, and promising to keep Tracy out of trouble. When he hangs up, he is a little embarrassed that Nick had heard him, but justifies his "sucking up" by saying that everyone does it to get ahead. Before Nick can say anything, a uniformed policewoman comes in and hands Reese a chocolate box, saying that it comes from the Commissioner. Reese is pleased by the recognition; but Nick breaks the mood by handing him his resignation. Act Five Outside the 96th Precinct police station, on the other side of the road, the bomber is sitting in his car. Inside, Tracy Vetter is sitting at the desk she has been temporarily assigned—not Schanke's, but the one just in front of it. She is at the computer, checking into the background of J.D. Valdez. Capt. Reese comes over and offers her a chocolate from the box he has just received. When he coaxes her by saying that they come from her father, she scoffs: her father hates chocolates. Reese reminds her that she is supposed to be off; but she explains what she has been doing, and says that she's going to check out Valdez's address—which appears to be a condemned church. Meanwhile, Nick is at his loft. The furniture is shrouded in dustcovers, and the smaller belongings have been packed into crates. Now, he is playing the piano. Natalie comes up in the elevator, very upset that she has just discovered from the desk sergeant that Nick has resigned from the Metro Police. As she explains how she feels that he planned just to disappear from her life, she works herself up to anger. Finally, she leaves, clearly disappointed in him. Tracy gets to the abandoned church, and makes her way up the unlit stairs into the main room, which is lit by candles. As she draws her gun and starts to look around, she doesn't realize that she is being watched from the balcony. Suddenly, she is grabbed by the throat and questioned in Spanish. She manages to warn her assailant that she is a police officer; but, even when she fires her weapon straight into him, it does no good. He flies up into the air with her, still questioning her in Spanish. Back at the loft, Nick is sitting musing. But then the phone rings. It is Reese, who wants to know whether the name J.D. Valdez means anything to Nick. Apart from recognizing it as the name of a missing passenger on the bombed plane, Nick has nothing he can add. Then both hear an explosion. It had been only a couple of blocks from the loft; and Nick identifies it as being the 23rd Precinct. Suddenly, the bomber (in his car outside the station) presses a remote, and a music box starts to play in the chocolate box that is on Reese's desk. Another explosion shocks both of them; and Nick suddenly makes the connection between the music he is hearing now and the music on the tape from the plane. He warns Reese not to touch the box. Reese also realizes what is going on: there is a bomb in the box. But he has his hand right on one of the chocolates, which he had been about to eat. Meanwhile, the vampire at the church is still trying to get Tracy to answer his Spanish. As she may well not understand the language, and he is couching his questions obscurely, it is not surprising that she can say nothing to satisfy him. Nick flies to the police station and rushes in. Reese has ordered the building evacuated, and there is chaos and people rush around. A uniformed officer tells him that several other precincts have been hit, and the bomb squad is busy. Nick continues up the room to Reese's office—to the astonishment of the Captain, who knows that they just got off the phone. But Nick has more urgent matters on his mind. With a dash of hypnosis, he persuades Reese that they should switch places. It's a delicate job; but they manage it, and Reese leaves the building. Back at the church, the mystery vampire finally makes it clear that he wants to know about the whereabouts of Vachon; but all Tracy can say is that she has no idea where he is. The man is not satisfied. The last of the people in the 96th Precinct police station are emerging from the building, to the bomber's frustration, since the chocolate box has not yet exploded. As he picks up the remote again, Natalie rushes up. She tries to go in; but Reese stops her, explaining the situation. She is horrified to learn that Nick is still inside. Suddenly, there is a violent explosion. Natalie and Reese stare in horror. At the church, the mystery vampire decides to bite Tracy. In the nick of time, Vachon leaps through the window into the room. He pins the other man against the wall, injured and unconscious, then goes to Tracy. He wishes he could make her forget; but she refuses. As Natalie and Reese peer through the smoke at the police station, Nick emerges. At the last possible instant, he had leapt through the window out to the alley. Natalie rushes up and hugs him. Epilogue Nick and Natalie are in the loft. He looks at the statuette. When she asks him what he intends to do with it, he says that he will take it back out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where it belongs. Blaming the statue will not bring Schanke back to life—though it is clear that Nick still rather thinks the Black Buddha is magic. On the television, the newscaster announces that the father of the baby girl has been found. Up on a roof, Vachon holds Tracy in his arms. He looks up at the moon, and then flies off with her. continued in Part Two Historical Flashbacks 1912, Atlantic Ocean. On board the Titanic, Nick is approached by Claire Gibson, who reveals that she is aware that he is a vampire. She shows him a small stone statue of the Buddha, and tells him that it has the power to grant the heart's desire of its owner. She wishes to become a vampire, and will give the Buddha to Nick if he agrees to do so. However, she admits the statuette is cursed to bring disaster—and the ship strikes an iceberg. Vampire Lore Fan Fiction Quotes Notes Behind the Scenes As the Season Three premiere, this episode marked a major change in the cast of Forever Knight. Besides a new police captain, Nick also got a new partner and the Raven a new owner, as John Kapelos, Deborah Duchêne, and Natsuko Ohama left the show. Continuity Canadian Content Goofs See Also *''Black Buddha Pt. 1'' screenshots Category:Episodes Category:Season 3 Episodes